A team of scientists, including Cluster Doctoral Researchers Erik Jung and Clara Vazquez-Martel and Principal Investigators Eva Blasco and Wolfram Pernice, has developed a new plug-and-play fiber interface for photonic chips. The researchers used two-photon polymerization to 3D-print optical couplers and alignment structures directly onto the chip. This enables a standard MTP multifiber connector to be plugged in without any active alignment. This connection achieves extremely low optical loss and remains stable across the entire telecom wavelength range. This breakthrough overcomes a significant challenge in scalable photonic packaging and is a crucial step toward mass-producible photonic AI accelerators and neuromorphic processors.
© Jung et al., Sci. Adv. 2025, eadz1883, CC BY-NC 4.0